


After Zeal

by Stariceling



Category: Chrono Trigger
Genre: Angst, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-21
Updated: 2006-12-21
Packaged: 2017-12-05 13:08:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stariceling/pseuds/Stariceling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after Zeal. Can history really be changed? Magus wonders...</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Zeal

She was gone.

Magus stared out into the ocean, trying to process that single, painful thought.

Schala was gone.

Was she buried somewhere under the waves? Had she been flung into some distant time? It wouldn’t even matter where she was, he realized, if she had given up so much of her power teleporting the rest of them out of the Ocean Palace that she had weakened herself unto death. That was entirely possible.

Why couldn’t she come with them? He should have been strong enough to bring her along. Why hadn’t he thought to keep something in reserve, just in case?

Not that he had spared a thought for escape, or that it would have mattered if he had kept some power back to escape. He had been drained by Lavos, and the remnants of his power were returning so slowly that Magus doubted he would ever return to his former strength.

Magus thought that he could tolerate even this sudden weakness if he had actually gained something in exchange. Instead he had lost everything. He hadn’t even realized how much he had wrapped himself in his magic until it had been ripped from him. Compared with the power he had earned over the years, Magus felt like a child again.

When he was young, Schala had been a perfect pillar of strength in his mind. The more he had thought about her, the more she had become his ideal. He had never realized how fragile she was because he never had anything but Janus, the child he had been, to compare her to. It had never occurred to him that the sister he had adored could be a fragile creature.

Magus had even managed to convince himself that he was the only thing that held her back, that the power she expanded shielding him was the reason she had never been able to overthrow their mother or return her to sanity.

He had forgotten that she wasn’t only kind to him.

To protect her, he had hounded her, trying to force her to harden her heart. He had tried to shield her from her own mistakes, to at least keep her from wasting what strength she had on strangers.

She had resented him for that. Even Janus, his own childish self, had resented him for it. He had been too caught up in changing his past to mind. It was too important for him to give up just to spare their feelings.

Being sucked into the future, and then thrown back into the past again by Lavos had given him one precious chance to save her, and a second chance to get his revenge on Lavos. He had been granted the chance to fix his own past, and somehow he had failed to change anything.

He should have simply taken her away, farther even than the Earthbound village she had tried to disappear to. He could have helped her escape through time. The means had been open to them. They could have used that portal his enemies had come through, sealed it from the other side, and lived freely in a new time.

Magus had been too intent on getting to Lavos to even consider that option until it was too late. He hadn’t even stopped to think that he might be taking the wrong route. Above all he wanted a chance to face Lavos, because he was sure that was the one thing that could change history. He had never doubted that he could protect Schala this time.

He had thought her so fragile when they were reunited, so gentle and helpless that she needed him to protect her, even as he knew that it was her power and her role in the past that would deliver Lavos into his reach. He thought she needed an older brother who was wise and wary and hardened, not the young child he had been. He was that older brother now, with experience to spare. He had been so sure that he would be able to swoop down and save Schala from everything, even from herself, the moment he needed to.

That confidence, that he could protect her, made it so much easier to put her in danger. He hadn’t thought, or hadn’t remembered, how she would react to that danger.

She hadn’t let herself be saved.

He hadn’t realized how strong she really was. It wasn’t her body, or even her magic that he had underestimated. It was her stubborn, indestructible will.

Even if he was the older one now, even if he was stronger in every way, the fact remained that he had been unable to do anything for her. She had saved him again, as he had been unable to save her.

Magus didn’t want to believe she was trapped somewhere under those waves. She hadn’t needed to be in the ocean palace at all. History demanded it, of course, but he should have been able to change history. Instead he had let his need to face Lavos place her in the Ocean Palace all over again.

Magus had known he was using her and their mother both to get to Lavos. He had traded his chance to change the past for a chance at revenge. Magus swore to himself that he would never have made that choice if he had known what he was giving up. He would trade the world for his revenge, but not Schala. He owed her far too much, loved her too much, and he had honestly wanted the chance to repay her.

Magus stared out into the ocean without truly seeing anything. He wasn’t sure why it was so important that he prove that he never would have willingly sacrificed his sister, even if he was only proving it to himself. There was no way he could explain to her that he hadn’t known what the outcome would be. He couldn’t show her now that he had only wanted what was best for her.

No matter what his intentions were, the fact remained that he had let every tragedy be repeated for the sake of that one chance to face Lavos and gain revenge. There must have been a way she could have been spared, instead of being trapped in the crumbling ocean palace.

Could the past really be changed? Could she have been saved? Magus wasn’t sure any more. There was no point in moving through time if time itself resisted change. It should change, yet he had failed to change his own history.

What had happened to his child-self? Had he been thrown into the future to live out his life up until now all over again? Magus didn’t have an answer. He hadn’t seen Janus when he stood before Lavos, but now Janus was gone. Just knowing what had happened to his past self could explain so much. Janus couldn’t have died when Zeal was destroyed, could he? If he was dead, then how could Magus still exist?

He couldn’t remember seeing the prophet he would become in his own childhood. Had he been forced somehow to forget, so that he would repeat the same mistakes and let history continue unchanged? Magus didn’t think he could forget such a thing, but now he couldn’t be sure.

Had this time, his past, always been like this? Exactly like this? There were parts of the pattern that were unfamiliar, but he couldn’t relive his own childhood to check. Even if something had changed with his presence, in a few decades there would be no visible difference. Zeal was still gone, and Lavos slept on at the planet’s core.

Had he always been meant to come back, yet not save her?

Did time truly resist change, or could a new future really be forged? Magus didn’t have any of the answers. He only knew that the changes he needed had not come to pass. Bits and pieces of the past might have changed, but none of the big events, and none of the important things, seemed any different to Magus.

All Magus really knew was that he had failed. Lavos lived, and Schala was gone.


End file.
